Category: Everyday Life

I really enjoy making things. That goes for creating intangible things like written works and computer programs, but I really find it satisfying to make something tangible with my hands. So I’ve picked up a number of crafting skills over the years, some more in-depth than others. I tend to cycle through them over a long enough period that I end up having to re-learn things when I return to them, but I also pick up skills fairly quickly so it works out fine.

Lately I’ve been focused on crochet; earlier this month I made a pair of fingerless gloves for an old friend I’ve gotten back in touch with, and another pair for my husband. I just started getting back into chainmail crafting as well. I’ve mostly made chainmail jewelry in the past, but I’m working on a new dice bag now, since I’ve also gotten back into playing Dungeons & Dragons on a regular basis.

Both chainmail and crochet can be very soothing, with repetitive patterns and attractive materials that I enjoy working with. They also both create textures that I find very pleasing to look at and touch. The pouch I’m making is formed as a widening circle, and the rings are small enough to form a dense weave that is essentially a flexible metal fabric. (They may not be the most efficient size to use, but I really like the effect.) The light glinting off the rings is also very soothing; my eyes keep getting drawn back to where it is sitting on the table, waiting for me to add to it.

At various times I’ve also enjoyed wood burning, leather working, metal stamping, and various types of jewelry making. I used to sell some of my jewelry on Etsy, but didn’t really put a lot of effort into marketing it. I’m actually thinking about reopening that shop soon, and expanding it to include examples of the different types of crafts I enjoy, as well as different themes that interest me. There’s nothing in there now, but I’ll share a link when it’s open. I’m calling it “Incurably Eclectic.” 🙂

I’m enjoying a little time off at the moment; I’m in between school semesters, and my primary job hasn’t had any projects for me for the past couple of weeks. That means I’m going to have a light paycheck or two, but it’s been really refreshing to have time to read things outside of coursework, and to work on projects that have allowed me to really dive deep in a way I haven’t been able to for a while. It’s been good.

I am also trying to use this time to change up my daily routine, specifically how I structure my mornings and evenings. I tend to find this really difficult; I realize it’s hard for most people to change their habits, but on top of that, I don’t really have a set daily routine. So it’s not just a matter of changing what I do at various times, it’s getting myself to maintain a routine in the first place.

That feels ironic to me, because so much has been said about the fondness we autistic people have for our routines, and how little we like it when things change. In some ways I’m no different, but at the same time I like to have flexibility in my schedule as well. Some days I have more energy, or more creativity, or more ability to focus, and I’d prefer to be able to take advantage of those days in a way that makes sense, instead of having to do the same exact thing every day.

So while I do prefer “sameness” when it comes to doing the things I do (e.g., I like to do them in the same way, and I dislike being blocked from doing them that way, or stopped from doing them at all when I had planned to), that doesn’t always translate into routine. Unless I have some external pressure, like a fixed starting time for my work day, I just don’t maintain a daily routine.

To some degree, I really can’t; the fact that my job doesn’t always provide consistent work means that I don’t have the same schedule from day to day. My class schedule is not the same every day, either—and on days when I have class and work, I have to arrange my schedule differently in order to fit everything in. Add to this the aforementioned preference for paying attention to my varying energy/creativity/focus levels, and I much prefer to vary things as necessary.

I do like some degree of predictability, though, at least on a week-by-week basis. I hate last-minute scheduling that adds something new on the same day, and if I have to reschedule something I would rather push it out to the next week than try to fit it into a week I already have laid out in my head. Because I do — I can see the “fixed points” of the coming week laid out ahead of me like an obstacle course. That gives me some idea of how to fit other work in around them, and some sense of which will be my busy days. When I wake up in the morning, too, I automatically start reviewing those fixed obligations, to get a feel for how I need to time everything else, like work and study and meals and dog walking. Adding in another commitment, even (ugh) a phone call, can throw that timing right off, and everything needs to be reshuffled.

I think most people don’t realize how much effort it takes to do all that reshuffling in my head when the “fixed points” get moved. They probably see me as inflexible when really I’m just overwhelmed because I know how much energy it takes — and that’s extra energy on top of what I need to actually do the things on my schedule. So as soon as I hear about last-minute schedule changes, I’m already spinning out all of the contingencies that ripple out from that change, all the things that need to be rearranged from the carefully-timed plan. It usually all works out (I try not to schedule myself too tightly) but until I’ve got a new plan, I’m anxious. And the less time I’m given to fit in the new thing, the more anxious I get.

Unfortunately, I don’t often get the level of predictability I would prefer, and that is one thing I would really like to change about my work situation. But since I do have this downtime now, I am hoping that I can set up some morning and evening habits that will start to feel established before my obstacle course of a schedule gets filled up again.

I’m not really into New Year’s. I don’t do New Year’s Eve celebrations, and I don’t make resolutions. I usually get impatient with year-end retrospectives as well; I lived through the year, after all, and I don’t need a recap. But I find myself thinking about the changing of the calendar year anyway, because this past year brought so many new ventures, and the coming year promises to include still more.

Mostly that’s because I’m always starting new ventures and taking on new projects. I set weekly and monthly goals for myself, as well as daily to-dos when I need to keep up momentum. Resolutions seem rather arbitrary and redundant because of that; there’s nothing special about making them at the start of a new year, when I essentially make them all the time.

But there’s still a cultural tendency to look at things by calendar year — 2017 was the year I started going back to school, for example, even though I’m only halfway through my first “school year” back. So I can look back at 2017 and see how much has changed, and forward to 2018 and project how things might continue. And whether or not I see it as a strict dividing line, there is still an air of “out with the old, in with the new” that pervades this time of year that gets me thinking in those terms, at least a little bit.

So however you approach this changing of the dates, I hope you find a satisfactory end to one arbitrarily-designated cycle around the sun and look forward to a fulfilling start to the next one. Waes hael!

I started three separate topics for a blog post this week, thinking I could use one or all of them, but frankly none of them is really coming together. For each one, I started to expand upon my observations and draw conclusions…but then things just fizzled and I couldn’t find the point. So here’s just a glimpse into some of the things swirling in my brain at the moment:

1. I’m done with my school semester! I’m very proud of the work that I did in both of my classes, and I’m looking forward to my spring courses, but I also need a break. Luckily, I have a little over a month off — which of course I have already started filling with work on personal projects. I tend to be reluctant to talk about things still in the works, but those are proving very exciting to me, and I’m looking forward to having some time to dive into them.

2. Gift shopping sucks. I spend so much time trying to find something the other person would like, when their interests and tastes are so much different from mine (and screw you, Theory of Mind theorists who say autistic people can’t understand this) that it stresses me out that I might get it wrong. In fact, I get jarring flashbacks to times I was criticized (sometimes quite harshly) for not spending enough, or not choosing the right thing, or some other gift-giving failure. I recognize that this was entirely not ok, but that doesn’t make it easy to shake off. So gift shopping sucks…but at least it’s done for this year.

3. I’ve made some new friends this year, and reconnected with an old friend I hadn’t spoken with in a long time — but I’m wary. So many times I have thought I found a friend who really “got” me, when in reality, I got them. At first that can feel like the same thing, but in the end it’s not. Ultimately, it takes some time to let things build and figure out whether there is some mutual understanding building, or if it’s more uneven. But that’s what makes me wary.

So yeah, just a few things pulling my thoughts about (and of course there are more, in all sorts of directions). But overall I am heading into my long weekend feeling ready for a rest — which for me includes lots of reading, writing, programming, and crafting, now that I have a little “down time.” Hah!

I’ve written before about how much I’ve been enjoying my sociology class, and that enjoyment has continued as the semester has progressed. There are only three weeks left of classes, and while I’m looking forward to having a break, I’m going to miss this one. The readings were well chosen, and we’ve had some great discussions about them.

I haven’t liked my psychology class as much, but I attribute that primarily to the structure of it as an online class, and to frustrations with the textbook. It’s also a little too basic, given my earlier familiarity with a lot of the material; a psych class in high school got me hooked on learning about how humans work, and it’s been a fascination for me ever since.

That’s mostly because explicitly learning about this stuff has really helped explain so many things that didn’t make sense to me intuitively. I feel like I’ve always been something of a social scientist, making observations, forming hypotheses, and testing out different approaches. Other autistic people have expressed similar feelings; perhaps the most famous is Temple Grandin’s description of herself as being “an anthropologist on Mars,” trying to figure people out. Many of us analyze our every interaction, looking to crack the code.

The thing that strikes me most about that right now is how much effort we put into this whole human interaction thing. And it really is a ton of effort: the amount of processing that goes into even casual social interactions can be exhausting, and the mental strain that results is often a big factor in autistic burnout. Plus the time it takes to get things “right” can easily lead to social anxiety, as the cumulative weight of failed interactions starts to add up.

So why is there still a pervasive stereotype that says autistic people are not interested in social interaction? Certainly, some of us aren’t; we’re a varied bunch, after all. But as a generalization, it falls far short of the reality, and I think the sheer volume of effort we put into every interaction gives an indication of how short it falls. And given that some new research shows that neurotypical people are less interested in interacting with autistic people based on superficial first impressions and social judgments, it’s past time we stopped placing all the blame for social difficulties on the autistic side of the interaction. We are putting in the effort. I think we should get some credit for that.

Well, it’s going to be another short-post week this week. I said last weekend that I expected this week to feel long, even though the workweek was short, but it actually flew by, and the weekend was no exception. I got almost everything done that I wanted to do, but now that it’s Sunday evening I don’t have a whole lot of brain space left for thinking up a blog post.

I’m actually really looking forward to Thanksgiving week, because my husband and I stay home, and it’s a nice long weekend to catch up on things. Things usually get hectic again after that, and now I’ve got end-of-semester stuff to look forward to, on top of holiday preparations, so…yay?

…is not something I did this weekend. In fact, I need a weekend after this weekend, but I’m not going to get one. At least I do have this Friday off (for Veterans Day), so it’ll be a short work week, but I expect it to feel long instead.

I visited family this weekend, including going to a wedding reception for my cousin. I hadn’t gone to any family functions in a while, so it was good to see people (although everyone’s kids had grown roughly six feet taller, so I didn’t recognize any of them) but it was also very loud, the food arrived late, and everyone was very huggy. Focusing on conversations against a background of loud music and lots of other conversations took a lot of energy.

Overall, though, it was a really good visit — I got to spend time with my parents and sister, and the dogs were really well behaved. I even got some study time in, so I’m not too far behind my usual weekly schedule. I’m just wiped out now, after the three-hour drive home in a rainy drizzle.

Last week I was actually very good about being aware of my energy and anxiety levels, and postponed starting on a new work project that could have started on Thursday, because I had a lot of things to get done before heading out for the weekend. Of course, that project was postponed until tomorrow, so I can’t really take the same steps this time, but at least I did get a lot of things wrapped up before the weekend so they won’t be hanging over my head this week. Just the usual load of work, school, and personal projects — but I’ve gotten used to managing that, and I can find little ways to recharge as I go.

And that starts right now, with a relaxing rest-of-my-Sunday. Hope you’re having a good one! 🙂